The association of alcohol consumption with diet and cardiometabolic risk in two independent UK populations

The association between alcohol consumption and cardiometabolic disease risk has been described as a J or U-shaped curve attributed to a combination of harmful and beneficial effects varying with volume of intake. Diet is an established risk factor for cardiometabolic disease and related traits However, few studies examining this association adequately control for residual confounding by dietary intake. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and markers of cardiometabolic health independent of dietary intake. Cross sectional analyses were conducted using data from the Airwave Health Monitoring Study – a British occupational cohort (n = 9,581). Alcohol consumption behaviour was determined from questionnaire and 7-day diet record data. Diet quality was determined by measuring adherence to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet using data from the 7-day diet records. Markers of cardiometabolic health included: adiposity (body mass index and waist circumference), blood pressure, cholesterol, HbA1c and C-reactive protein. All analyses were replicated in an independent UK cohort using UK Biobank data (n =146,888). As part of this thesis, genetic analyses were conducted to investigate whether genes implicated in the regulation of HDL-c may facilitate some of the cardioprotective effects attributed to alcohol intake. Heavy alcohol consumption is associated with a deterioration in cardiometabolic health. The risk of cardiometabolic disease as indicated by a cardiometabolic risk score was lowest amongst moderate drinkers and highest amongst never, and heavy drinkers. Increasing alcohol intake was associated with a deterioration in diet quality and had an additive effect of total energy intake. Diet quality did not modify the relationship between moderate alcohol intake and cardiometabolic risk. Alcohol intake did not alter the effect of genes implicated in the regulation of HDL-c. These findings were validated in a sub-sample of the UK Biobank cohort. To conclude, the findings from this thesis show that alcohol consumption plays a key role in determining diet quality and cardiometabolic risk. Specifically, risk of developing obesity.Open Acces

"'Girls getting it together': a study of race, class and gender through the writings of young women"

This thesis attempts to examine the relationship between educational processes and class and gender reproduction. Such an investigation cannot avoid the ways in which racism and sexism affects the lives and schooling of young women. A significant theme running through the study addresses structuring processes within schools, the organisation of family life and the social relations of female waged labour. The study attempts to analyse the complexity of female social experience by bringing together the writings of young women across class, racial and educational boundaries. An unusual aspect of the study lies within the method of data collection. The writers who were drawn from a variety of class and ethnic backgrounds were encouraged to write about the material and emotional circumstances of their lives. The instances that are used within the study highlight the ways in which class, gender, racial and patriarchal relations produce contradiction, conflict and resistance. The act of writing is not only seen as a way of examining specific experiences, it is also seen as a means of developing cultural literacy. Working class women, girls who have moderate learning difficulties and women from ethnic minorities seldom see definitions of their own specific social world portrayed within literature. The act of writing is used to examine the material circumstances of women’s lives in relation to class and ethnic associations as well as in relation to male power relations. Finally, the thesis emphasises the significance of writing as an educational and political strategy which can be used to examine both male and female forms of consciousness

A Global Analysis of the Adaptations Required for Sterol Catabolism in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis: A Dissertation

Systems biology approaches have allowed for comprehensive understanding of complicated biological processes. Here, we’ve developed a global phenotypic profiling method by improving upon transposon mutagenesis methods for identifying genes required for bacterial growth in various conditions. By using the massively parallel power of Illumina sequencing, we precisely redefined the genes required for the growth of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Mtb) in vitro. This adapted technique provided more informative data with both increased dynamic range and resolution. As a result, we quantitatively assessed the fitness of individual mutants, as well as identified sub-genic essentiality. Mtb is well adapted to its nutrient-limiting intracellular niche. One important and novel adaptation is its ability to consume cholesterol for both energy and carbon. A combination of this genome-wide phenotypic analysis and global metabolite profiling was used to define the dedicated cholesterol catabolic pathway, as well as important transcriptional and metabolic adaptations required for the consumption of this carbon source. We identified the methylcitrate cycle (MCC) and an unexpected gluconeogenic route as essential pathways. Furthermore, we found that the cholesterol-dependent transcriptional induction of these metabolic enzymes was also essential for growth on this substrate, a function mediated by the Rv1129c regulatory protein. Using a combination of genetic and chemical methods to inhibit these pathways, we show that cholesterol represents a significant source of carbon during intracellular growth in macrophages. Finally, we have begun to define the mechanism by which lipids, such as cholesterol, are imported into the cell by investigating the assembly of the ABC-like lipid transporter, Mce1. The subunits of this system are localized to the cell wall and data is provided to support a novel mechanism for Mce-dependent import of lipids, such as cholesterol. In sum, this global analysis of host cholesterol utilization during infection provides insight into each step of this complicated process; import into the bacterial cell, the degradation of the molecule into primary metabolites, and the transformation of these metabolites into carbon and energy

Social Media in Libraries & Archives: It’s More Than Marketing

Usually the conversation about social media in libraries and archives revolves solely around marketing. However, Luther College\u27s Library and Information Services\u27 Social Media Team has been focusing on how to use social media platforms for research, instruction, and to build awareness of the librarian and archivist skillset in the community. Come learn about impact and logistics of two non-traditional social media projects--a rephotography campaign on Facebook and web reputation education using LinkedIn. With stories, insights, and practical guidance on how to implement these ideas in your own institution, you’ll see how social media can be more than chasing likes and followers. Instead, these platforms can be used to empower your community through information literacy

Social Justice in the Library is Critical

Librarians have always been motivated by the needs of their patrons, and in today’s difficult political climate, we must address issues of social justice and equity. We have adjusted our practices to meet these needs, and will describe ideas for displays, programming, and curricula that have been successful in our libraries with the hope that you might be inspired toward social justice in yours. This paper will outline several areas where librarians can address social justice in connection to their communities

Putting the Comprehension in Metacomprehension

The purpose of the present piece is to integrate some current theories of text comprehension with the body of work on metacomprehension, and especially the calibration of comprehension monitoring. This paper explores some important methodological and conceptual issues, inspired by current theories in the text comprehension literature, which suggest that the nature of the texts used for metacomprehension studies may be a critical, and currently unrecognized, factor that should be considered. First, we need to re-examine what we mean by “comprehension,” and how we should measure it. There are important differences between memory for text and comprehension of text that need to be considered. Second, to fully deal with these concerns, we need to pay more attention to the kinds of expository text that are being used, the different ways that readers may understand these texts, and how readers may interpret the concept of “understanding” as they make their judgments

Variation and gradience in a noisy harmonic grammar with lexically indexed constraints: the case of Spanish -s deletion and aspiration

This thesis presents a new way of modeling variation in production and perception within and across lexical categories. By adding lexical indexes to both the input and relevant faithfulness constraints in a Noisy Harmonic Grammar model, I will show that production frequencies be used to predict well-formedness judgments of variable forms. First I show that by using this model, an artificial learner in Praat (Version 5.1.43) can learn the appropriate production frequencies of variants showing -s deletion and aspiration in Spanish. In Experiment 1 I show that Puerto Rican Spanish speakers choose sentences with aspirated adjectives as more well-formed than sentences with aspirated nouns. In Experiment 2, participants' perception of ambiguous phonemes along a continuum from [h] to [s] is significantly influenced by the lexical category of the root to which the ambiguous fricative is attached. These results support the predictions made about perception judgments based on variable production frequencies

Individual Differences, Rereading, and Self-Explanation: Concurrent Processing and Cue Validity as Constraints on Metacomprehension Accuracy

The typical finding of metacomprehension studies is that accuracy in monitoring one’s own level of understanding is quite poor. In the present experiments, monitoring accuracy was constrained by individual differences in both reading comprehension ability and working memory capacity (WMC), but rereading particularly benefited low-ability and low-WMC readers, effectively eliminating the relationship between monitoring accuracy and these reader characteristics. In addition, introducing a self-explanation reading strategy improved the accuracy of all the readers above mere rereading. The observed interaction between individual differences and rereading is interpreted in terms of concurrent-processing constraints involved in monitoring while text is processed, whereas the more general self-explanation effect is interpreted in terms of accessibility of valid, performance-predicting cues

Discerning (Dis)information: Teacher perceptions of critical media literacy

Critical media literacy (CML) is vital for students to navigate the current proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. Despite what is known about the influence of teacher beliefs on classroom practice, little research to date has looked at what teachers perceive about the importance of CML. The researchers administered a survey to teachers throughout the U.S. (N = 362) on their perceptions of the importance of teaching CML as part of their instruction. Using quantitative methods, the researchers found CML as the primary factor underlying the survey data and a strong awareness of the importance of teaching CML to students. While years of teaching experience, subject areas, being a primary, elementary, or middle school teacher, geographic area, and being politically conservative or progressive were not significant predictors of CML factor scores, three covariates showed significant differences gender, educational level, and being a high school teacher. Implications for teacher education programs and professional learning initiatives and other suggestions for improvement are included in the discussion

TEACHER PERCEPTIONS OF CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY

Critical media literacy (CML) is vital for students to navigate the current proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. Despite what is known about the influence of teacher beliefs on classroom practice, little research to date has looked at what teachers perceive about the importance of CML. The researchers administered a survey to teachers throughout the U.S. (N = 362) on their perceptions of the importance of teaching CML as part of their instruction. Using quantitative methods, the researchers found CML as the primary factor underlying the survey data and a strong awareness of the importance of teaching CML to students. While years of teaching experience, subject areas, being a primary, elementary, or middle school teacher, geographic area, and being politically conservative or progressive were not significant predictors of CML factor scores, three covariates showed significant differences—gender, educational level, and being a high school teacher. Implications for teacher education programs and professional learning initiatives and other suggestions for improvement are included in the discussion